Project Miroslava: The Murder of Miroslava; Unpunished Narco Politicians

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Zeta

                                         Miroslava Breach knew they were going to kill her.
By: Adela Navarro Bello

Many times they had threatened her. A few days before her murder on March 23, 2017, she advised her daughter about what to do with her inheritance, reordered the life insurance documents, and commissioned the raising of her youngest son to one of her sisters.

Threats to the journalist of Chihuahua, a correspondent for  La Jornada , were aware of the Governor of the state, Javier Corral Jurado, all the way up to the Attorney General. Also ex officio colleagues and families. The society could even have deduced it from the journalistic works of Miroslava, consignments about the exercise of narco-politics in the municipalities of Chihuahua, in political parties such as the PRI and the PAN, which not only had in their governments  relatives of drug traffickers on the payroll and in security areas, they also made them candidates. At least they tried.

 But the journalist was not silent. It was not her thing. Quite the opposite. "Silence is complicity," was her phrase.

From the investigation that after two years and six months, ie, 2 1/2 years , maintains the crime of murder of Miroslava Breach is in impunity, a few days ago and, fortunately, many media outlets published an investigative work carried out by journalists who grouped together in Colectivo Marzo  23  to carry out the tasks of investigative journalism tasks by Miroslava's colleagues. There is a lot of impunity, they find.

In three pieces that you can find for reading on the project project page, it is revealed not only the judicial file that began in the General Prosecutor's Office of Chihuahua and continues in the Special Prosecutor's Office for the Attention of Crimes against Freedom of Expression, but also the Investigation of the journalists on the tracks not officially attended, the minimized evidence, the witnesses that seem suspicious, the loose ends in the ministerial framework of the case.

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The most important and unattended of the insane binomial of narco-politics fed up and was denounced by Miroslava Breach: Politicians.

Indeed the narcos have been pointed out, even though not all, as intellectual and material authors of the journalist's murder, while the politicians with whom they had obvious and proven links, were protected. They were not and are not a line of investigation despite having participated as messengers with organized crime regarding the investigative work of the murdered journalist.

The journalists Colectivo Marzo 23  investigated detail in the first part: “politicians who were not asked obvious questions; people who could have had some degree of participation and, nevertheless, were granted the quality of witnesses with reserved identity; irregularities at the crime scene; inconsistencies in the tests and leaks of information to the press that served as distractors of public opinion. ”

We must read the texts to understand the level of harassment that journalists live in Chihuahua and the impunity enjoyed by politicians and drug lords who have taken over municipalities, which control municipal police and other departments, and that political parties have infiltrated to impose candidates.

The journalistic work of Miroslava Breach and Patricia Mayorga, with which she displaced by showing the violence, thwarted the attempts of drug traffickers to dominate the electoral scene.

Another important text of the journalistic work: “Organized crime groups managed to infiltrate the lists of candidates for mayors, mainly in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), but also those of the National Action Party (PAN), for the June 5 elections in mountain municipalities and drug transfer corridors, published  La Jornada . The two journalists agreed to publish the same information at the same time, as a protection measure. ”

They refer in part to the municipality of Chínipas from where Miroslava was originally. I knew the political actors, the social actors and ,of course, the criminals. As to the band of Los Salazares, a criminal entity linked to the Sinaloa Cartel based in that region of the country that dominated from corruption, blood and lead. After the journalistic notes about the candidacy of Juan Miguel Salazar, "nephew of Adam Salazar Zamorano, Don Adan, the founding patriarch of the group Los Salazares" his candidacy was withdrawn. Then the threats increased.

Journalists report that as part of the process against the alleged perpetrator of the crime against Miroslava, the only prisoner of the three who allegedly collaborated to kill her - one more is dead, another fugitive - from when the authorities located the suspect's house via computer with various files, including an audio. It was the recording of a call that the journalist received from Alfredo Piñera, spokesman for the PAN in Chínipas, and then speaking on behalf of Mayor Hugo Amed Schultz. He recorded it without the journalist's consent the call in which, due to his dialogue and questions, he sought to define the municipal president Schultz as an informant for the reporter. The recording, as they would confess, was delivered to Los Salazares as proof that he had not leaked information. Everything had originated from the individual investigation of Miroslava. That's how she let them know.

But neither that proof, nor the recording, nor the confession, were enough to investigate the politicians. They protected them. They remain in impunity to this day.

Nor were investigated those who from the PRI whom had made a candidate of  Silvia Mariscal Estrada, mother-in-law of Arturo Quintana, namely , a criminal of the Juarez Cartel.

No politician has been investigated in the case of the murder of the journalist, who a month before the fatal  day of March 23, 2017, reads in the special investigation, “ published  in  La Jornada  and  El Norte in Ciudad Juárez  a note that perhaps was her death sentence: She wrote that the narcos had infiltrated Municipal Public Security (SPM) and the Public Works area of ​​ten municipalities in Chihuahau, among these, Chínipas. ”

The reports on proyectomisorlava.org also reveal the criminal and political environment to divert attention from the main investigation. Five related murders, Governor Corral in a search, false ballistics reports, threatening mantas among drug traffickers. 

See my BB Post on the 5 Related Murders Here.http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2019/09/the-5-deaths-tied-to-murder-of.html

Killing a journalist as they did in Chihuahua on March 23, 2017 meant the persecution of a few criminals, the protection of others, and impunity for the political class of one of the states with the highest murder rates in Mexico, and with underworld that grows under the protection of political power.

In Mexico it is like that:

Killing a journalist has never guaranteed anyone ending up in prison. Impunity is such that it continues to happen. Regardless of the party that heads the state, municipal, or that of the Republic.  Assassinated journalists murderers are not persecuted, prosecuted or imprisoned.

At home, at  Zeta,  we are still waiting for justice for the murder of Héctor Félix in 1988, for the attack against Jesús Blancornelas in 1997, for the crime of Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco in 2004. Of Javier Valdez de  Riodoce , murdered in May 2017, two months after Miroslava.

                                        
Of the 131 journalists murdered in Mexico since 2000 to date as documented by Article 19, of the 11 who have had their lives taken since the birth of the  sexennium of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Do not forget the cases. Please read:  proyectomiroslava.org. Remember that the unpunished do not favor silence, because "silence is complicity,"  as Miroslava and so many others have said and done.